Gustavo Dudamel and Valery Gergiev Face National Issues

The Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor Gustavo Dudamel was the subject of protests at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in February.

Reed Saxon / Associated Press

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

April 3, 2014

On Feb. 12, the charismatic Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel led a youth orchestra in Caracas to celebrate the 39th anniversary of El Sistema, the government-supported program that has organized hundreds of thousands of children across Venezuela into instrumental ensembles, serving as a model of using music education for social uplift. As the performance was underway, a crackdown on peaceful demonstrations was being enforced in the streets. People were protesting the policies of President Nicolás Maduro’s government, along with the pervasive crime, crippling inflation and scarcities that plague Venezuela today.

According to news reports, Venezuelan security forces have been using excessive force to put down continuing anti-government protests, including beatings and shooting into unarmed crowds. More than three dozen people, including protesters, bystanders and soldiers, have been killed and there have been widespread injuries.

The events of Feb. 12 proved too much for the self-exiled Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero, who was an outspoken critic of Mr. Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, and is a vocal opponent of the Maduro government. She released a letter on social media explaining that out of respect and affection for Mr. Dudamel and José Antonio Abreu, the founder of El Sistema, she had kept quiet — until then.

“I love the musicians in El Sistema,” she wrote. But “the leaders have a moral duty to speak up and risk whatever is necessary in order to stand up against this dictatorship that we are now suppressed by.” In a plea that cut to the core of the issue of an artist’s responsibility in society, an issue that has come up especially in the world of classical music of late, Ms. Montero wrote: “No more excuses. No more ‘Artists are above and beyond everything.’ No more ‘We do it for the kids.’ ”

The kids in El Sistema have been Mr. Dudamel’s exact justification for cultivating good relations with the Chávez and the Maduro governments. He says that he, personally, is responsible for the welfare of countless children in his homeland, many of them from impoverished regions. But in what social and human rights context are these young people making music and learning to work together? The dilemma raises the crucial question of what role an artist should play in a nation’s life — at any time, let alone during a period of violent conflict. In this situation, Ms. Montero’s call for Mr. Dudamel to speak up seems absolutely right.

In an open statement addressed to the Los Angeles Philharmonic family, Mr. Dudamel, music director of that ensemble since 2009, defended his decision to conduct the youth orchestra while violence raged in the city.

The Russian conductor Valery Gergiev has faced questions about his support for his country’s positions on gay rights and the annexation of Crimea.

Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times

“Should the concert have been canceled, thereby sending hundreds of young people who had already arrived at the hall back into those same streets?” he wrote. As the public face of El Sistema, Mr. Dudamel has become its chief protector. “I cannot allow El Sistema to be a casualty of politics. Regardless of political or public pressure, I will continue this work in Venezuela and throughout the world.”

Do artists have a special responsibility to speak out about injustice? Or do artists contribute best to social welfare by the practice of their art, and that alone? This issue is pertinent in classical music, because the field is considered, for better or worse, a high art with a mystique of gravitas and enlightenment. And classical music crosses international boundaries; governments of all kinds and all times have embraced it to enhance their prestige.

The questions above came up at the opening event of the Metropolitan Opera’s season in September, when a new production of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” was performed. As the gala’s patrons walked toward the opera house, some three dozen gay rights demonstrators gathered near Lincoln Center Plaza to call on the Russian maestro Valery Gergiev, who was conducting that night, to denounce the antigay policies of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin. These laws include a vague ban on propaganda for nontraditional sexual relationships, which could be interpreted as merely being openly gay. The protesters also called on the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, who was singing the role of Tatiana, to denounce Mr. Putin’s policies.

It is hard to say what Mr. Dudamel should do about the crackdown in Venezuela. I feel for his anguish. It strikes me as unfair to go as far as Ricardo Hausmann, a former Venezuelan planning minister who is now a Harvard professor; he called Mr. Dudamel a “musical giant but a moral midget.” Even Ms. Montero is not exactly clear about what she wants of Mr. Dudamel. Is she asking him to resign from El Sistema in protest? It seems not. But she is beseeching him to speak out clearly against repressive policies, trusting that the Maduro government would not dare move against such a celebrated and influential Venezuelan. But she does not live there; Mr. Dudamel does.

Last month, during a Times Talks conversation that included the composer John Adams, Mr. Dudamel fidgeted in his chair as he tried to answer a question about what he should say or do concerning the crisis in his homeland, particularly the government’s response to the protests, regardless of one’s political perspective. He went a little further than he had to date in pushing back against the government when he said, “I believe in the right of people to protest, because this is a right.” He said he deplored violence whatever its origin and spoke of the great good that El Sistema has done as an “agent of social change.” He was at his weakest, though, when essentially pleading for understanding that he can only do so much.

“I am not a philosopher,” he said. “I am not a politician. I am not a doctor. I am a musician, a simple musician.”

Mr. Dudamel’s ethical bind puts in perspective Mr. Gergiev’s dismaying silence on gay rights in Russia. Mr. Gergiev, one of the major musicians of our time, has long been a Putin ally. In return, Mr. Putin has provided crucial government support for the Mariinsky Theater, which Mr. Gergiev has run since 1988. Last spring, Mr. Gergiev opened Mariinsky II, the new $700 million companion house to the opulent original 19th-century theater in St. Petersburg. Mr. Putin was among the proud attendees at the gala opening.

In response to the protests from gay rights activists, Mr. Gergiev simply issued a statement asserting that the Mariinsky Theater has long welcomed artists regardless of their backgrounds or orientations. But that was not the issue. What the demonstrators, and countless music lovers, wanted is for Mr. Gergiev to speak out against a hateful policy and, at least on this one issue, criticize the president who has bestowed on him the title Hero of Labor.

I wonder if Mr. Gergiev has seen a short video, produced by Human Rights Watch, that shows public harassment and violent attacks fueled by discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Russians. Released before the opening of the Sochi Olympics, the video includes comments from Tanya Cooper, Russia researcher for Human Rights Watch, who says that by “turning a blind eye” to “hateful homophobic rhetoric and violence, Russian authorities are sending a dangerous message” that there “is nothing wrong with attacks on gay people.”

Some commentators have questioned why it took this issue, gay rights, to rouse people to demand that artists like Mr. Gergiev stand up to Mr. Putin. What about the many other objectionable policies of the Putin government? That is a fair question.

But discrimination against gay people cuts close to home in the arts, and the lessening of homophobia has everything to do with gay people being open and feeling embraced by leaders from all realms of life. All that Mr. Gergiev, a man of wealth and power, is being asked to do is to speak up for a persecuted minority. Mr. Dudamel, by contrast, is being pressured to take on an entire government while attempting to maintain an empowering youth program. If the Mariinsky Theater is the welcoming place Mr. Gergiev claims, what would it cost him to take a stand against the government’s antigay agenda?

To be fair, Russia has a sterling history of bending artists to the state’s will. Look what happened to Pussy Riot, the feminist, punk-rock protest group: Two of its members were in penal colonies for 21 months. A recent article in The New York Times reported that Russia’s culture ministry has pushed leading artists and intellectuals to sign a petition endorsing the annexation of Crimea. Mr. Gergiev promptly signed it. This action has set off accusations from opposition figures in the arts and academia who say that the Kremlin is resurrecting repugnant Soviet methods of intimidation. Some 200 Russian artists and intellectuals have boldly signed a counter petition protesting Mr. Putin’s policies in Crimea.

Gay rights advocates protesting a performance last year of the Mariinsky Orchestra led by Valery Gergiev at Carnegie Hall.

Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times

Protests against Mr. Gergiev, 60, continued in October, when he conducted the Mariinsky Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. He seems impervious to condemnation from segments of the music world. But Mr. Dudamel, who at 33 has galvanized the Los Angeles Philharmonic and its audiences, a man who has become the new face of classical music, appears truly distressed.

He does not help his cause by calling himself just “a simple musician.” The artist’s role in society has never been a simple matter. Artistic institutions have been used as fronts for all manner of regimes. Since the influence of the Medici, the arts have been uncomfortably beholden to the powerful, no matter the political leanings of benefactors. You need only consider the name emblazoned on the renovated David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center.

The artist’s responsibility to society was a running theme during Carnegie Hall’s recent festival Vienna: City of Dreams, anchored by the Vienna Philharmonic. During one symposium, that orchestra’s tainted legacy was discussed. How could an ensemble founded as a democratic, player-run ensemble have become a vehicle for the Nazi propaganda machine?

One panelist, Clemens Hellsberg, a violinist in the orchestra and also its chairman, has been leading an effort to answer that question by opening the institution’s archives. At Carnegie Hall, Mr. Hellsberg came across as having a clear understanding of his personal responsibility as an artist and a leader of the Vienna Philharmonic. “We can’t say that we were the ones who premiered Bruckner’s Second, Fourth, Sixth and Eighth Symphonies, or Brahms’s Second or Third, or Mahler’s Ninth, and at the same time maintain that during the Nazi era it was those other guys,” he said.

A recent example of a principled artist speaking out took place when the conductor Zubin Mehta presented a concert at Carnegie Hall with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Mr. Mehta, its music director, is a revered figure in Israel. Yet in an interview with The New York Times before the performance, Mr. Mehta, speaking from “my private musician’s perspective,” as he put it, challenged certain policies of the Israeli government that were taking it in a “wrong direction,” he said, especially regarding the settlements.

It takes nothing away from Mr. Mehta’s forthright comments to suggest that he has less at stake than Mr. Gergiev. Israeli culture has long encouraged fierce internal debate of all national policies, especially within the Knesset, its legislative body.

Mr. Gergiev has to consider that his actions may at some distant time be the topic of a panel discussion on the artist’s responsibility. It was fitting that the opera he conducted to open the Met season was by Tchaikovsky, a towering Russian composer who was a tormented gay man.

It was also relevant that Mr. Dudamel appeared with Mr. Adams at that Times Talks event to discuss his pulsing, vibrant new Deutsche Grammophon recording (with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Master Chorale and fine vocal soloists) of Mr. Adams’s powerful “The Gospel According to the Other Mary,” a passion oratorio told from the perspective of Mary Magdalene, Martha and Lazarus. In it, Mary runs a shelter for unemployed and homeless women with the somber Martha. These characters, living amid hardship, have much in common with the people in impoverished areas of Venezuela who have found some uplift through El Sistema. But to thrive, the children in those ensembles have to believe they live in a country that fosters individual rights and free speech as well as the arts.